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The Tombs of the Byzantine Emperors at the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Glanville Downey
Glanville Downey
Affiliation:
Dumbarton Oaks, Washington, D.C.
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Extract

One of the most impressive manifestations of the majesty and the antiquity of the Byzantine Empire must have been the great series of imperial tombs in the mausoleums of Constantine and Justinian which were attached to the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople. Beginning with the burial of Constantine the Great (d. 337), the mausoleums served as the resting-places of most of the emperors (often with members of their families) who reigned during the next seven centuries, the last emperor to be buried there being Constantine VIII (d. 1028). The mausoleums then became full, and the emperors began to be buried in other churches and monasteries in Constantinople, often in establishments which they themselves had founded. There are not many comparable series of royal burials, and the presence of these tombs, as a visible record of the greatness of Byzantium, was one reason why the Church of the Holy Apostles enjoyed a celebrity only second to that of St. Sophia.

The emperors, beginning with Constantine the Great, understood very well the importance of placing the imperial burials in a worthy setting. The significance of the burials is illustrated by a report of a speech of Leo V, the Armenian (813–820), in which Leo is supposed to have remarked that the orthodox emperors were all buried respectably at the Holy Apostles, while the others died in exile or on the field of battle. In reality most of the emperors who reigned before the time of Leo V were buried at the Holy Apostles, and nearly all of those who reigned between his time and the beginning of the eleventh century were buried there.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 79 , November 1959 , pp. 27 - 51
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1959

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References

1 The material published here was originally intended to be a part of a collaborative monograph on the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople which was to be prepared at the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, in Washington, D.C., under the direction of Professor A. M. Friend, Jr., by Professor Friend, Professor Paul A. Underwood, and the present writer. When the death of Professor Friend made the completion of the monograph impossible, the material on the royal Tombs became available for publication elsewhere. I am indebted to the late Professor Friend and to Professor Underwood for their advice in the study and elucidation of this material, and I am also grateful to Dumbarton Oaks for procuring photostats of the passages in MSS. in Paris which are edited here. These photostats, obtained through the kind offices of M. Jean Porcher, are deposited in the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library. It is a pleasure to be able to record here my indebtedness to Professor R. J. H. Jenkins for his friendly interest and encouragement of these studies.

2 Koukoules, Ph. I., ‘Τὰ κατὰ τὴν ταφὴν τῶν Βυζαντινῶν βασιλέων,’ Ἑπετ. Ἑταιϱ. Βυζ. Σπονδ., xv (1939) 65–66.Google Scholar

3 Scr. incert, de Leone Bardae filio 349 (Bonn ed.).

4 The emperors who reigned between Leo V and Constantine VIII who were not buried at the Holy Apostles were Romanos I, 919–944, and his sons Stephen and Constantine, 944–945; and John I, 969–976. Romanos (who was buried at the Myrelaion (Kedr. ii 325, 12–13: Bonn ed.) and his sons would certainly not have been admitted to the mausoleum by Constantine VII, and probably were soon forrgotten after Constantine VII's death. John I, being a usurper, would not have been admitted to the mausoleum. No record of his burial seems to have been preserved. Of the 107 sovereigns who occupied the throne between 395 and 1453, only 34 died natural deaths while on the throne; 8 died in battle or by accident, and the others abdicated or died by violence; cf. Diehl, C., Les grands problèmes de l'histoire byzantine (Paris, 1943) 49–50.Google Scholar

5 The editio princeps, edited by Heisenberg, A., is printed in his Grabeskirche und Apostelkirche (Leipzig, 1908) ii.Google Scholar A new edition by the present writer (which had been prepared as a part of the monograph on the Church of the Apostles mentioned above), is published in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society xlvii (1957) 855–924.

6 Cf. Omont, H., Inventaire sommaire des manuscrits grecs de la Bibl. Nat. ii (Paris, 1888) 142–3.Google Scholar This list was reprinted by Bekker in Codinus, Excerpta de antiquitatibus Constantinop. (Bonn, 1843) 203–8, without Banduri's notes, and was again reprinted in Migne, , PG clvii 725–40Google Scholar, with most but not all of Banduri's notes.

7 English Historical Review xxii (1907) 209–27, esp. 217–19, 223–5.

8 Cf. Bury, 215.

9 Cf. Omont, 143.

10 This number twelve includes separate sarcophagi for Leo VI and Constantine VII, who had originally been buried together, and includes the sarcophagus of St. Theophano, which was later removed.

11 Cf. Koethe, H., ‘Das Konstantinsmausoleum und verwandte Denkmäler’, JdI xlviii (1933) 188.Google Scholar

12 Mesarites refers to the Mausoleum of Constantine as a νεώς, xxxix 1.Google Scholar

13 Delbrück, R., who did not know all of the evidence cited here, suggested (Antike Porphyrwerke (Berlin, 1932) 223)Google Scholar that the ‘stoas’ in which Arkadios, Eudoxia, Theodosios II, Julian and Jovian were buried were the colonnades of the atrium.

14 Ed. Arsenieff, S. V., Pravoslav. Palestin. Sbornik, No. 12 (1887) 7–8.Google Scholar

15 Libanius, , Orat. xviii 306Google Scholar; Amm. Marc. xxiii 2, 5; xxv 5, 1 (cf. 10, 1). See Bidez, J., La Vie de l'empéreur Julien (Paris, 1930) 330.Google Scholar

16 Eutropius x 18, 2; see Stein, E., Gesch. des spätröm. Reiches, i (Vienna, 1928) 266.Google Scholar Julian had likewise been deified (Eutrop. x 16, 2).

17 This suggestion is made by Vasiliev, A. A., ‘Imperial Porphyry Sarcophagi in Constantinople’, Dumbarton Oak Papers iv (1938) 11.Google ScholarSchneider, A. M., ‘Das Regium sepulchrum apud comitatum zu Konstantinopel’, Nachrichten d. Akad. d. Wiss. zu Göttingen, Phil.-Hist. Kl. 1950, 15Google Scholar, believes that Marcellinus Comes uses comitatus to mean the imperial palace itself (a usage attested elsewhere), and adduces archaeological evidence for such a burial-place near the palace. This view encounters certain difficulties. Comitatus was originally, and perhaps more frequently, used to mean ‘the imperial court’ or ‘the imperial suite’, so that Marcellinus might have meant to say that Valentinian was buried among his ‘imperial companions’, that is, at the Church of the Apostles. In fact, one might wonder why Valentinian should not have been buried there. There appears to be no other literary evidence for an imperial mausoleum connected with the palace, either in Valentinian's day or later. For these reasons it is difficult to accept Schneider's hypothesis, pending the discovery of fresh evidence.

18 The body of Valens (364–378), who was killed in battle, was never found; Gratianus (367–383), who was assassinated, was refused burial; Valentinian II (375–392) was buried at Milan. See above, note 2.

19 A law promulgated 30 July 381 (Cod. Theod. ix 17, 6) decreed that bodies which were contained in urns and sarcophagi and were to be kept above ground should be placed outside of cities, noting specifically that a church (or tomb) of apostles and martyrs (apostolorum vel martyrum sedem) could not be used for the burial of bodies (humandis corporibus). It seems likely that it would generally be considered that the bodies of the emperors and their families would be excepted from this last provision; in any case the law was not observed later with regard to the Church of the Apostles. On the law, see Rauschen, G., Jahrbücher der christl. Kirche (Freiburg i. B. 1897) 94.Google Scholar

20 See the account of Arkadios' reign by Bury, J. B., Hist. of the Later Rom. Emp. (London, 1923) i 107–59.Google Scholar

21 Eudoxia died on October 6, 404, Arkadios on May 1, 408 (Bury, 159). At the time of Arkadios' death, Theodosios II was a child of seven years (Bury, 212).

22 Honorius was buried in Rome: Paulus, , Hist. Rom. xiii 7, 197Google Scholar, 31 (ed. Droysen). Eudoxia's interest in building activities is attested by her sponsoring of the construction of the church at Gaza which was called the Eudoxiana in her honour; she provided the plan of the building (which was cruciform) and furnished columns for it. The church was begun in 402 and dedicated in 407: Diaconus, Marcus, Vita Porphyrii, ch. 75, 78, 84, 92 (ed. Grégoire-Kugener, ).Google Scholar

23 Vasiliev, A. A., Justin the First (Cambridge, Mass., 1950) 414–17)Google Scholar who did not take into account some of the evidence pointed out here (in particular, the passage in the Book of Ceremonies 646), concluded that Michael was buried in a sarcophagus which had been prepared for the use of Justin I in advance of that emperor's death, but remained vacant because Justin was buried in the sarcophagus in which the Empress Euphemia, who had predeceased him, already lay. Vasiliev's suggestion is attractive, but it does not provide any plausible way in which some of the other evidence adduced here can be explained.

After the present paper was completed, an important study of the record in the Book of Ceremonies (c. 42, p. 643, 16 Bonn ed.) of the burial of the daughters of Leo VI was published by Ohnsorge, W., ‘Zur Frage der Töchter Kaiser Leons VI’, Byzantinische Zeitschrift li (1958) 78–81.Google Scholar